nitro, a tiny but flexible init system and process supervisior

Overview

Nitro is a tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux.

There are three main applications it is designed for:

As init for a Linux machine for embedded, desktop or server purposes
As init for a Linux container (Docker/Podman/LXC/Kubernetes)
As unprivileged supervision daemon on POSIX systems

Nitro is configured by a directory of scripts, defaulting to /etc/nitro (or the first command line argument).

Requirements

Kernel support for Unix sockets
tmpfs or writable /run on another fs

Benefits over other systems

All state is kept in RAM, works without tricks on read-only root file systems.
Efficient event-driven, polling free operation.
Zero memory allocations during runtime.
No unbounded file descriptor usage during runtime.
One single self-contained binary, plus one optional binary to control the system.
No compilation steps needed, services are simple scripts.
Supports reliable restarting of services.
Reliable logging mechanisms per service or as default.
Works independently of properly set system clock.
Tiny static binary when using musl libc.

Services

Every directory inside /etc/nitro (or your custom service directory) can contain several files:

setup, an optional executable file that is run before the service starts. It must exit with status 0 to continue.
run, an optional executable file that runs the service; it must not exit as long as the service is considered running. If there is no run script, the service is considered a “one shot”, and stays “up” until it’s explicitly taken “down”.
finish, an optional executable file that is run after the run process finished. It is passed two arguments, the exit status of the run process (or -1 if it was killed by a signal) and the signal that killed it (or 0, if it exited regularly).
log, another service that is brought up. The standard output of run is connected to the standard input by a pipe.
down, an optional file that causes nitro to not bring up this service by default.
Service directories ending with ‘@’ are ignored; they can be used for parameterized services.

You may find runit’s chpst useful when writing run scripts.

Special services

LOG: this service is used as a logging service for all services that don’t have a log directory.
SYS: SYS/setup is run before other services are brought up. You can already use nitroctl in rc.boot/setup to bring up services in a certain order. SYS/finish is run before all remaining services are killed and the system is brought down.

Modes of operation

The lifecycle of a machine/container/session using nitro consists of three phases.

First, the system is brought up. If there is a special service SYS, its setup script is run first. After it finishes, all services not marked down are brought up.

When a service exits, it’s being restarted, potentially waiting for two seconds if the last restart happened too quickly.

By using nitroctl Reboot or nitroctl Shutdown, the system can be brought down. If it exists, SYS/finish will be run. After this, nitro will send a SIGTERM signal to all running services and waits for up to 7 seconds for the service to exit. Otherwise, a SIGKILL is sent.

Finally, nitro reboots or shuts down the system; or just exits when it was used as a container init or unprivileged supervisor.

Controlling nitro with nitroctl

You can remote control a running nitro instance using the tool nitroctl.

Usage: nitroctl [COMMAND] [SERVICE]

Where COMMAND is one of:

list: show a list of services and their state, pid, uptime and last exit status.
up: start SERVICE
down: stop SERVICE
start: start SERVICE, waiting for success
restart: restart SERVICE, waiting for success
stop: stop SERVICE, waiting for success
p: send signal SIGSTOP to SERVICE
c: send signal SIGCONT to SERVICE
h: send signal SIGHUP to SERVICE
a: send signal SIGALRM to SERVICE
i: send signal SIGINT to SERVICE
q: send signal SIGQUIT to SERVICE
1: send signal SIGUSR1 to SERVICE
2: send signal SIGUSR2 to SERVICE
t: send signal SIGTERM to SERVICE
k: send signal SIGKILL to SERVICE
rescan: re-read /etc/nitro, start added daemons, stop removed daemons
Shutdown: shutdown (poweroff) the system
Reboot: reboot the system

Controlling nitro by signals

rescan can also be triggered by sending SIGHUP to nitro.

reboot can also be triggered by sending SIGINT to nitro.

shutdown can also be triggered by sending SIGTERM to nitro, unless nitro is used as Linux pid 1.

Nitro as init for Linux

Nitro is self-contained and can be booted directly as pid 1. It will mount /dev and /run when required, everything else should be done with SYS/setup. When receiving Ctrl-Alt-Delete, nitro triggers an orderly reboot.

When possible, nitro logs output to dmesg while no LOG is running.

Nitro as init for a Docker container

Nitro is compiled statically, so you can copy it into your container easily:

COPY ./nitro /bin/
COPY ./nitroctl /bin/
CMD ["/bin/nitro"]

Note that /run must exist in the container if you want to use the default control socket name.

You can put the control socket onto a bind mount and remote control nitro using nitroctl from the outside by pointing NITRO_SOCK to the appropriate target.

Authors

Leah Neukirchen leah@vuxu.org

Thanks

I’m standing on the shoulder of giants; this software would not have been possible without detailed study of prior systems such as daemontools, freedt, runit, perp, and s6.

Copying

nitro is in the public domain.

To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/